Friday, July 26, 2013

BUDDHACARITA 6.44: Stony Death and Worried Me, Work Together in Perfect Harmony, Side by Side on My Round Black Cushion...

⏑⏑−−¦⏑−−−¦¦−⏑−−¦⏑−⏑−

sva-janaṁ
yady-api
snehān-na tyajeyaṁ mumukṣayā
|

−⏑−−¦⏑⏑⏑−¦¦−−−−¦⏑−⏑− navipulā

mtyur-anyonyam-avaśān-asmān
saṁtyājayiṣyati
|| 6.44

6.44

Even if, while retaining the desire to
be free,

I, through attachment, fail to abandon
my own people,

Death, perforce, will cause us

Totally to abandon one another.

COMMENT:

EHJ
made a big change to the text of today's verse: at
the end of the 2nd
pāda he
changed mumukṣayā
(EBC:“in my desire for liberation”)
to ahaṁ svayam (“of myself”). EHJ thus translated
“Should affection lead me not to quit my kinsfolk of myself, still
death would part us one from the other against our wills.”

EHJ
made this textual intervention partly
on the very dubious grounds that mumukṣayā is omitted from the
Chinese translation, and partly on the grounds that the Tibetan text
(according to which, in EHJ's version, svayam in the 2nd
pāda and avaśān in the 3rd
pāda are opposed) is stronger than the old Nepalese manuscript's
text.

In my judgement, the contrast that the
Tibetan translator must have highlighted is already there in the
two ablatives which seem to mirror each other in the 1st
pāda (snehāt, through affection/attachment) and in the 3rd
pāda (avaśāt, perforce, through a force not submissive to
another's will).

Retaining the text of the original Sanskrit manuscripts, then,
what is its ostensible meaning and, assuming there is a hidden
meaning, what is the hidden meaning?

On the surface today's verse is like
leading with a trump card, the ace of spades, in opposing human
sentiment with objective reality. On the surface, it is another case
(as also for example in BC5.38) of using death as the ultimate
conversation stopper, the weapon of choice in putting an end to
post-modernist “narratives.”

A key to unlock hidden meaning might
be the compound sva-janaṁ (“my own people” or “my own kith
and kin”) which is the very concept that the Buddha exhorts Nanda
to abandon at the end of the passage quoted yesterday from SN Canto
15.

With thoughts about close relatives,
therefore, you should not enshroud the mind. /There is no abiding
difference, in the flux of saṁsāra, between one's own people
(sva-janasya) and people in general (janasya). // SN15.41 //

If we understand the prince's words in
today's verse as thus presaging (or echoing) the teaching of the
enlightened Buddha, then death is the means, or the ultimate cause, of
abandonment of concepts like "my own people."

Death, in that case, might be
synonymous with that spontaneous happening that Dogen called body and
mind dropping off and one's original features emerging – in which
happening, today's verse as I read it is suggesting, I abandon
concepts and concepts abandon me.

Ostensibly, then, the prince in today's
verse is thinking ahead to what would happen if he left the
forest and went back to his family – he is saying that if, because
of his affection for his kith and kin, he went back to rejoin his
family in the palace in Kapilavastu, and remained there harbouring
the frustrated desire to be free, then he and his people would
inevitably be separated anyway in the end by death.

But below the surface Aśvaghoṣa as I
hear him is describing what does happen when a practitioner
goes to the forest to practise alone – he is describing a real
situation in which a practitioner has gone to the forest with the
desire to be free, and in the forest he is maintaining the desire to
be free, and yet, because of deep-rooted attachments, unhelpful ideas
like “my own people” continue to prove difficult to shake off...

If, though they are
being shaken off, a trace persists of unhelpful thoughts, / One
should resort to different tasks, such as study or physical work, as
a means of consigning those thoughts to oblivion. //
SN16.77 // A clear-sighted person should even
sleep or resort to physical exhaustion, / But should never dwell on a
bad stimulus, pending on which might be an adverse reaction. //
SN16.78 //

When the practitioner persists by such
means so that something else eventually takes over (an experience akin to
death), the practitioner and unhelpful thoughts like “my own
people” are, in that instant, abandoning each other.

From my side, by practising what is
called in Alexander work conscious inhibition, or saying No
to an idea, I abandon ideas and I
thereby facilitate death (or “body and mind dropping off”). From
the forest's side, by taking away my ears by birdsongs, by ripping
away my views with the moon, and by other means too mysterious to
mention, nature enforces balance on me so that something dies and
ideas evaporate by themselves.

In one
of the most encouraging passages that Aśvaghoṣa wrote, he has the
Buddha tell Nanda:

“It may not be
possible, following a single method, to kill off bad ideas that habit
has so deeply entrenched; / In that case, one should commit to a
second course but never give up the good work. //
SN16.70 // Because of the instinct-led
accumulation, from time without beginning, of the powerful mass of
afflictions, / And because true practice is so difficult to do, the
faults cannot be cut off all at once. // SN16.71 //

When we read today's verse in light of this
teaching, we might conclude that the really vital point in today's
verse is conveyed at the end of the 2nd
pāda by mumukṣayā, which means having or maintaining or utilizing
the desire to be free.

Without this desire to be free, there
might be plentiful gainful employment for professors of Sanskrit in
the field of Buddhist studies, but there is no thirst that is
quenched by drinking in a forest stream while sitting, and there is
no hidden meaning in a verse like today's verse.

I should add that I am much obliged to
EH Johnston for his truly gargantuan efforts in Aśvaghoṣa's
service – almost as much as I am obliged to Gudo Nishijima for his gargantuan efforts, in which he emphasized, in a somewhat one-sided and reductionist manner in my book, how balance of the autonomic nervous system causes thoughts to "evaporate" (Gudo's word). How balance, conversely, might be a function of thinking was, for Gudo, strictly off limits.

And so
this is how I repay great workhorses of the past, by highlighting
their faults and complaining about the gaps in their thinking. A
hundred years from now, it is to be hoped, somebody who I helped
along the way will be doing the same in regard to my faults and the
gaps in my thinking.

VOCABULARY

sva-janam
(acc. sg. m.): one's own people ; kith and kin

yady-api:
even if , although

snehāt
(abl. sg.): unctuousness; affection, attachment

na: not

tyajeyam
= 1st pers. sg. optative tyaj: to leave, abandon

mumukṣayā (inst. sg.): f. (fr.
Desid, muc) desire of liberation from (abl.) or of final emancipation